During the robotic manufacturing process of small electro-optical assemblies it is often necessary to perform production processes on a component surface that is not easily accessible due to the orientation in which the component part must be acquired. Furthermore, the ability to acquire these components from a known registered position is not always possible, even though the final process may necessitate exact component location. Consequently there has historically been a need to both reorient and exactly position a component part acquired by a robotic manipulator.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,778,332, titled, "Wafer Flip Apparatus," by Byers et al., Oct. 18, 1988, describes a device used for component reorientation. The disclosed device reorients a component part by rotating it through a fixed angle, however contact with the part is from one side only and consequently the device is not able to present alternate surfaces to a production process. For this to be accomplished, it would require a transfer to a secondary fixture, resulting in added hardware costs and cycle time. Furthermore, this device does not correct the orientation of the component part as it is picked, consequently the placement location could be no better than the acquired location. Not only would these processes require the expense and space of additional hardware, but would also significantly add to the overall robotic production cycle time.
Moreover, such secondary fixtures as described in, for instance, Statutory Invention Registration No. H422, titled "Apparatus For Inverting Articles and Method For Using Same" by Daniels et al., published Feb. 2, 1988, have been widely used for some time. However, these devices do not possess the capability to exactly correct the location of the component's acquired position.
Where reorientation of the part relative to the picking mechanism has been demonstrated without the use of a secondary fixture, for instance as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,875, titled "Probe and Inverting Apparatus" by Tessier et al., Apr. 13, 1993, the complete mechanism requires several discrete actuators. Furthermore, such picking mechanisms make no provision to exactly correct the location of the acquired position.
Therefore, a need persists for a method for grasping and precisely aligning an object and then orienting it for independent processing without incurring the problems experienced in the prior art.